Cautiously, she went forward and stood over the Supreme Being. She lowered her bitless drill head and nudged one of his motor appendages. Drawing away, she watched it swing back and forth in smaller and smaller arcs until it finally came to rest. Then she went into a limited ecstasy of reaction. She whirled around in circles until she became afraid she would tilt another gyro. She reared up on her two posterior appendages and thumped back upon the ground. She swung her drill head up and down, back and forth, around. Through her rear slot she exhausted all the sludge from her analyzing chambers. She had won! She had supplanted Bigboss! She had climbed to the top rung of the ladder! And now She was Supreme Being! That she had been able to succeed, despite Bigboss' overwhelming superiority, was a datum so questionable that she almost decided to reject it before storing it away. * * * * * Minnie went into another triumphant dance, but suddenly came to a rigid halt. Her head held high and Her lens aimed in the direction of the non-Totemic mobile that was withdrawing toward its needle. There was something _wrong_ in Her Universe! It was not at all as it had been before She had conquered the Supreme Being! Tensely, She recalled for review impressions only recently implanted on Her drums. And she recognized immediately what was missing. The telemetric chatter of all the workers was gone! Nor could she detect the constant exchange of directive and acknowledgment that had always flowed ceaselessly between Bigboss and each of the workers. Yet, all the analyzers were there, continuing their chores as though nothing had happened. Apprehensive now, she assigned her meager rationalization capacity to the task of deducing the reasons behind the startling change. And many sine wave peaks passed before the judgment was handed back up to her main circuits for storage on a memory drum: Bigboss had _justifiably_ been the Supreme Being! For He had, indeed, been Supreme. The workers had voices, of course. But they were isolated voices that could be heard by other members of the clan only because they were passed along by Bigboss. Minnie's drill head sagged until it rested on the ground. She was Supreme Being now. But it was only a hollow distinction. For she had fallen heir to none of Bigboss' authority. That authority had been lost forever in the neutralization of charges which had rendered the former Omnipotent One impotent. What _had_ she done? How could she have been so irrational? Why hadn't she more thoroughly evaluated the consequences of her forced ascendancy? More for consolation than for any other reason, she transmitted a desperate "where-are-you?" impulse to Screw Worm. The directional signals that returned brought with them a great sense of balance to the circuits in her PM&R pack. She was not, after all, alone! She still held the supplemental function of supervision over her sole helper!